Beneath
by The Mustachioed Cat
Summary: The Angel War is over, and quickly becoming myth. Ten years after his apparent death, Shinji Ikari returns to a world that has moved on and forgotten him.
1. 01

**Beneath

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**

Chapter One

* * *

When Asuka had moved into the Katsuragi household, Shinji had lost his alarm clock. He quickly discovered he didn't need it. Without fail, his eyes would open between 6:00 and 6:15 every day.

This gave him ten minutes to bath, then cook. Depending on the food, this usually took thirty to forty minutes. It was a simple matter to heat instant meals, but Shinji could not abide such things. Enumerating the contents of the refrigerator and shelves, and making from those things something a little different each day, was one of the things that kept him sane. It wasn't the smell of simmering vegetables, or the taste of the finished product. It was an act of creativity, and one of the few freedoms Shinji could avail himself now.

Life was slow and real to Ikari, but he couldn't help but feel disconnected from it most of the time. School was mechanical, a ritual process of read-and-regurgitate. Conversations with his friends tended to be monosyllabic and reactionary.

He pandered to Asuka. She tended to be less destructive when she thought herself in control. Misato was rarely encountered outside of NERV proper, her job and habits keeping her from the apartment. The longest conversation they had held in weeks had involved a drunken Major screaming at Shinji to 'finish his sardines.' This had also been their most lucid exchange, outside of Eva.

Eva... was one of the few things that roused Ikari from his waking slumber, and he hated it. The reason he had originally decided to pilot had become little more then a ghost. Rei Ayanami had returned to primitive mind, despite his early efforts to help and understand her.

Asking her to smile, trying to define a thing like 'sadness'... he found those memories idiotic, shameful. That one time in her apartment... that memory made his flesh crawl. His thoughts never lingered on the First Child for long because, like Eva, she could make his waking life horribly lucid.

The Angels... they wouldn't stop coming, and every battle saw Shinji with some new scar. How many now? The invaders retained numeric designation, but he never paid attention during the debriefing and, since he had done his job, no one much cared.

Month XX, 20XX, School Day

Today Shinji cooked a ball of ground chuck, with bell peppers and rice. More brown then white, the peppers narrowly sliced. Another variation. The last of this kind for a while, they were out of peppers.

According to Asuka, the meal was very palatable. Actually, she mumbled something her own guttural language. Shinji didn't actually know what she had said, but "very palatable" made her easier to ignore. He didn't really taste the food as he ate, got up and washed his dish and chopsticks, and put them away. As he worked, he felt Asuka staring at him. Strange, it had been a while since he had felt that. Had he been ignoring it this whole time, or was this simply a rare occurrence?

Shinji didn't meet her eyes, didn't do anything to acknowledge her. It was a school day. He had to prepare.

The walk to school was five blocks long, ten minutes walking. Shinji walked in silence, head tilted, staring at the mountains that crested Tokyo-3. Only visible after the... was it the 17th or the 20th Angel? After some Angel had decimated the city skyline, had the mountains been made visible from Shinji's daily perspective.

The overcast sun hadn't taken the misty shroud from the mountains yet, and they seemed ghostly, indistinct. They were unchanging, and so Shinji focused on them. Better then listening to the hum of traffic, or the staccato of constant reconstruction. His gaze was intense and detached, an early morning stare.

Asuka was talking beside him, in half-heard tones and distant inflection. Shinji's thoughts only acknowledged her when he realized she wasn't speaking anymore, that she was no longer by his side.

He stopped and turned. Asuka was six steps away, wearing a peculiar expression.

"Well?" she asked.

"What?" he replied.

And just like that her odd look was replaced with typical, guarded one. She came at him and yanked him towards school, and the rest of their journey was quiet.

At lunch, Shinji followed Touji to the school store and bought two rice balls and some vegetable sushi. Then the two of them went to the school roof, and Touji talked about a girl he was seeing, and asked Shinji questions he eventually answered himself. Shinji ate his food and nodded. Then Kensuke joined them, talking about the latest scrap of esoteric knowledge he had stumbled upon. This entailed more nodding, a few painfully lucid moments to drudge up a friendly question, and then Shinji was done eating.

"Hey, Shinji..." Kensuke began as the boy got up to leave, "why don't you cook your own lunches anymore?"

A direct question. Torn from his placid state, Shinji closed his eyes and actually considered the question. When had he stopped doing that? Why had he... Oh.

"Asuka doesn't like the food I make," he was saying. But that couldn't be right, could it?

"Hikari told me different," one of them said. Shinji couldn't tell which, his eyes were closed and the voices were warping...

"She said Asuka ain't been aall rightsince that one... what was it?"  
"I think she said the 28th."  
"The one with the...?"  
"Ya."

Shinji tasted copper. He had bitten his cheek. He tried to answer the question, but found his mind wanting to avoid it, to go back to his grey and simple inner world. He bit himself again, and managed a short, neutral grunt.

Then he left. His friends called after him, but those voices were so far away...

School ended. Shinji and Asuka swept the classroom clean with several other students, and then the two left. The walk home had no mountain backdrop, just roads and an incline. The world was red with the setting sun, and the cicadas made plenty of noise. Shinji concentrated on the insect sounds, almost as timeless as the mountain. But the drone ooscillated in pitch, and passing cars made almost the same sound, as they whooshed by. Imperfect. Variable.

Asuka said something. Shinji stopped.

She had been quiet thus far. As far away as Shinji was, he knew that. But she had said something just now, hadn't she? Shinji searched his memory, found it empty... save for that faint impression... then she said it again.

"What is wrong with you?"

But she wasn't screaming it. She wasn't looking at him like he was some insect. That look from earlier in the morning was back. Shinji couldn't read it, and already his mind was being lulled back to the cicada.

"Why are you doing this to me?" she said, in a strange tone of voice.

Shinji wanted to pause and examine this question. To understand and possibly respond to it, but he couldn't. The cicada were calling. He turned and continued home. Asuka followed.

There were no exercises at NERV that day, so Shinji started preparing dinner as soon as they arrived home. They had three more pounds of hamburger meat, so Shinji took some of that and started it sizzling on the stove, along with water for rice. He sliced up mushroom and put them and a narrow slice of butter on the stove as well. Then he cut up some crab meat and carrots.

Asuka came up behind him, and said something. A question or a statement? It sounded...

Shinji dumped a quantity of rice into the now-boiling water, and stirred the mushrooms. He got out the nori wrap, and washed the crab meat and carrots one last time. Thought a moment, then got out and sliced up a cucumber too.

Asuka was still talking, and he could almost hear her.

Took the meat off the stove and covered the pot up. Stirred the mushrooms. Checked the rice, strained it out. Then he started making the sushi.

There was a muffled thump as Asuka hit the table. Her voice was rising.

The mushrooms were done. Shinji took them off and added them to the hamburger meat. He returned to wrapping and slicing the sushi. Eventually Asuka left.

Shinji carefully set the table, set out Asuka's western eating utensils, five sushi, and a plate of the meat and mushroom concoction. On his side: chopsticks, meat, four sushi.

Then Shinji put a candle between the plates, and lit it.  
Then he wondered why.

Asuka was in the room again. She was making random sounds, crouched near the floor. She moved around the room, but didn't sit down. Shinji sat, ate, and then left. Behind him he might have heard a crash, but it was time to sleep. He opened the door to his room and

Asuka hit him, hard.


	2. 02

**Beneath

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**

Chapter Two

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"This was right before the 28th showed up... do I have to talk about this? It just seems like he should... Anyway, this was right before the 28th appeared. We'd just finished our final tests of the year. And even though Shinji and I got top marks, they still stuck us with the rest of the idiots...

Right, we were... celebrating and... No, we weren't drunk! Just because we live under Misato's roof doesn't mean we care for her... predilections. We were just eating something that idiot had cooked and, he grabbed my hand.

What? No, he wasn't being violent. No! Not...sexual. What do I think he meant by it? How should I know wha... maybe. I don't know. That's what... that idiot has just been tormenting me! Someone should beat some sense into him! If you'd let me see him... the story?

After that... moment, he just cleaned up, fed that penguin, and went to bed. Pen Pen? You know he's a rock-hopper... oh. ...That's stupid! The last zoological disease epidemic... of course I'm right. That idiot didn't catch a virus from the bird... or prionic, I know what I'm talking about, stop trying to make me look like a child!

Yes, six hours later the 28th came. Shinji and I were rushed to NERV by Section Two, and engaged the enemy.

It was pyramidal, with a ribbon-like protrusion coming out of it's apex. It was... transparent, and there was a... an amorphous shape, I guess that's the best was to describe it, inside. Shifting in shape and color, all the time. We tried to engage it at range with no luck. It could move to any point on that tentacle-thing. Application of macro-scalar quantum mechanics, or something.

We exhausted ranged options, so moved in for melee. I had that chainsaw thing R&D came up with, probably the last time we used it. Anyway, the idea was to occupy all possible areas of emergence on the ribbon, which wasn't much of a threat by itself. Wonderg... The pilot of the prototype took point, grabbed the part of the ribbon nearest the Angel, and forced it down and... stood on it.

It seemed like the Angel couldn't materialize where there was a good deal of solid matter, so burying it seemed like a good idea. Then we could blast the uncovered end and hope that the Angel had to exist on that particular stretch at all times. If this had been another Dirac-Angel, we'd probably have to destroy the entire ribbon to get rid of it.

Shinji came after... I know what her name is, okay? He came next, and tried to do the same. I went after, and the three of us had most of the ribbon buried. We looked like fools, standing on a line like that. The pyramid hadn't moved during this time, seemed to be a Reactionary type... but then it took Shinji.

That... fool had left some slack in his line. The ribbon came out of the ground and the pyramid materialized, upside down, and trapped the upper portion of Unit One. Radio contact with Pilot Ikari was severed, and the Angel began to draw the lower portion of Unit One into itself... in such a way that made it appear that... it looked like the legs were being eaten... just forced straight up.

Unit One vanished, and Ayanami and I attacked the target. It rotated out of the way, and the First Child almost impaled me with that huge red fork she's been carrying around since the 17th. Similar attempts to damage the Angel were met with equal success. The thing's movement seemed fragmented at that point, but it was moving so fast, there was really no way to tell.

Eventually it just stopped. I went at it with the chainsaw, and Ayanami tried chipping at it... why? Because we didn't want to accidently hit Shinji, of course! Well... yes, that had occurred to me. But I'm a professional.

The chain on my weapon broke. Ayanami's weapon was having no luck. It wasn't a matter of the thing's AT Field, we were neutralizing that. The outer layer of the thing was just incredibly dense. They later found the part of it I went after... diamond-edged two-story chainsaw, and it only gave the stupid thing a 'brushed metal' look.

At this point, the Commander asked the First Children to "use" the lance. I'd already seen her poke the damn thing, I didn't see what point there was to trying again. Rei seemed to think differently. She said she would not do something that might kill Ikari.

I don't think I'd ever heard her challenge an order like that before. I am still impressed, even though the First and I... are very different people.

The Commander was repeating his order when Shinji killed the Angel

I beat that thing with my fists.. had to wear a cast on my hands for a few days after... I couldn't make that thing move at all. It was an unmovable object, and I couldn't... we didn't have an irresistible force handy. Perhaps if I hadn't been focusing my AT Field on neutralizing the Angel's...

Shinji nearly cleaved the Angel apart latitudinally with what looked like one sweep of Unit One's arm. Something was screaming, Unit One I think, and fingers appeared in the opening he had made in the Angel, and forced the top of it right off.

It happened quickly, and I still don't like thinking about it... Unit One's legs were limp in horrible and anatomically inconsistent ways. They curled in on themselves. The armor was white with distention, where it wasn't covered in gore.

Unit One's eyes were red. It's "forward restraint", as you called it at the time, was broken, and I saw teeth. White teeth. Eva aren't supposed to have teeth. ...because I've seen my Eva's face. I've seen video records of the construction of the other two units. Evangelions have featureless gray faces. Eyes eventually appear, since the optic nerves are still intact... but the mouth, teeth... to have that grow after full-term incubation... it should be freakish, it should be misshapen and crude and cancerous...

These teeth looked human.

The Angel wasn't dead. It's core was wedged under the apex, and had been protected within and without by an interior column of it's body. That had been torn away. The Angel had been upside down when Shinji had torn it apart, so the Eva had no problem reaching through the gore from it's own injuries, and...

It ate the Angel's core. It ate the weird, muscular growth that was at the top of the apex, wedged between core and Angelic shell. I know all of this because one of you bastards got into my system and used it to record all of that. Having a view screen full of that... no, it didn't upset me! Unit One had clearly gone berserker, like the battle with the 3rd Angel.

...I don't care what my biometrics say. It was just... jarring, having control of my video systems taken.

...fuck you, Akagi!

...it's almost done anyway. Unit One ate all the meaty parts of the Angel, and then it started to shudder. The shoulder harness and abdominal armors shattered open. At the torso, the empty hip sockets began to... well, it looked like the remains of the Angel, and the broken parts of the Eva's legs were just drawn in, armor and all. There was... I suppose that's what rapid regeneration looks like... A controlled, mass cellular genesis would probably look like a constantly blossoming, tumorous growth. This guy named Yanick did some interesting stuff with that back in 2007...

...right. The legs, sans the armor, grew back. Like the teeth, they looked human. I can't believe the bones weren't shattered, for the weight of the musculature. I thought the armor supported the Eva's gigantic structure. I guess... I was mislead.

And that's it. The Angel was declared dead, a bunch of people threw up in the control room, and you quarantined Unit One and it's pilot for three days.

Four days. Whatever.

Yes, it started then. Even when he was trapped in that hospital bed, legs cast up from residual psychosomatic response, he seemed to... ignore everyone. This was especially irritating, since Misato practically dragged me down there every day.

He answered questions, but wouldn't invite them. Just responses, usually short. You couldn't really talk to him. Some things he wouldn't respond to at all.

Like what? None of your business.

Confidential.

No it won't. It won't help one bit. Misato just wanted you to ask that.

Of course it got worse. Why am I here? He was a fucking zombie at home. He did chores, he fed the bird and made meals, but other then that he just sat in front of the television, not watching much of anything, or was asleep. School... didn't much change. We don't talk much in school...

...because we live under the same roof, much as I detest it. I wouldn't be able to stand him whining at me all the time. Always apologizing... well... not after the 28th, but before...

He stopped making me lunch too. Started following that ass Suzahara around like a puppy. The sad thing is, I think it took his friends a while to notice. I figured it out all at once, but they accepted that this... malaise, was normal. Those idiots.

This went on for about two months. Up to the 29th.

If he hadn't acted when he did, I think Wondergirl would be dead now. I still don't understand why he did it... he didn't say anything over the comm, didn't give any indication he was coming. But just when Unit Zero was passing the threshold for bio-contamination, he showed up and... well... absently killed the Angel.

I saw it happen. I saw him rise from the shaft, walk, not run, over, and put his arm through the Angel. He shattered it's core. It was nothing to him. Then he just deactivated, and wouldn't open his comm channel. They had to haul Unit One back to it's cage... or a spare, I guess, on the rail system.

The debriefing was unreal. Everyone was looking at the Commander, even as one of the techs reviewed the data collected from the Angel, and the battle. Disobeying orders... soldiers have to be given certain privileges. Snap judgement is better made in the heat of combat then staring at a tactical display. That's why Misato and the Commander had put up with all of the Third's failures. I thought that at the time, anyway.

But this had to be too much.

The Commander waited until the meeting was almost over, then directly addressed his son, telling him to, in the future, follow orders. Not doing so may put others at risk. In the future. He said that a second time.

And that was it.

Shinji took it the way he'd taken everything the last weeks. His eyes were focusing, but always somewhere behind whatever he appeared to be looking at. Made you feel transparent, trying to talk to him. Idiot.

...no, nothing until last night. Last night... he collapsed.

We had just finished eating... yes, like I said, cooking was the only thing he seemed to do on his own... and he cleaned his plate, and started to his room, and just... he fell over. No, he didn't trip, he just collapsed. Yes, I saw it.

I called Misato, and some people took him to the hospital. I tried to go with them, but they wouldn't let me. Today I went to the hospital, and they say Shinji was never admitted. You know where he is, right? Misato wants me to...

...what?

...brain dead?


	3. 03

**Beneath**

**

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**

Chapter Three

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Asuka hit him, and he fell. Shinji buckled and slammed into floor, making not the slightest motion to protect himself. Not so much as a twist in order to land on his side. He landed face-down with a thud, and was still. And quiet.

And then, Shinji Ikari began to truly fall. The meager remnants of his personality at last slipping free of flesh, dripping out of his mind. There was the floor, and Asuka was speaking, and then. And then.

The world went away. It was replaced by a colorless place, indescribably vast. Shinji drifted on some kind of current, gliding among the strange not-place's only discernible features - localized distortions of space, shimmering as though unbearably hot.

This went on for a very long time. Shinji did not mind. The corruption of his soul had advanced to the point where he had barely functioned, back when he had a body. Without one, without certain biological needs, he basically ceased to exist. Everything that was Shinji was still there, but it was inert. Sleeping.

And then he collided with one of those distortions in space. And reality slammed back into place. There was a large popping sound and cries of shock and pain, and suddenly Shinji was staring at... someone else.

There was a boy on the ground before him, one cheek sliced open, blood painting that side of his face and dribbling on the shirt beneath. He had brown hair - peppered with broken glass - dull blue eyes, and a very familiar look of fear.

Shinji looked around, vaguely surprised he had the motivation to do so. He was in an arcade of some sort. It appeared he had emerged in the middle of a game cabinet, which was shattered and smoking, the joystick and buttons melting, the screen an empty cavity.

"Y-you," the boy on the floor said. His eyes were fixed on Shinji, but no one else on the scene seemed to be reacting to his presence.

"Me," Shinji replied, fixing on the word. "Yes. Me." Something inside him shifted, the bizarre anatomy of his soul bending at the mere utterance of a self-identifier.

And the world became less real, but did not vanish. Everything grew thin and translucent, the floors and walls and everything beyond them. The boy too, grew transparent, and Shinji saw what lived inside him. There was something in there, a band of energy that glowed bright, and pulsed in time with the light of Shinji's own soul. But it was different. Shaped in a way Shinji could not replicate. There was more to it than energy - the brain was there too. The actual, physical brain. The energy flowed in on one side, and emerged on the other... changed.

The boy opened his mouth, but no words came out. He was trying, badly, to fight down a scream.

Shinji's soul twisted and pulled. It wanted to be like the boy's band of energy. But Shinji had no body to oblige it.

That world, and the boy that looked so like Shinji, fell away. He was back in the void. Drifting. Drifting. Drifting.

**You** came a voice in Shinji's head.

Me, Shinji replied.

And suddenly there was something huge and black before him, a mote of self-aware and physical reality in the void. It wrapped around him and dragged him forward, until they came to a particular distortion of space and then.

Yeah. And then.

* * *

Shinji woke up. He was underwater. No. In LCL - everything was tinged yellow around him. He seemed to be in some sort of support harness, which hooked across his shoulder and groin. Other than that, he was naked. He was in a tube of some sort. There was a plug just over his head, and if he pushed on it, stretching downward, his toes brushed the bottom, sliding across some dull vent-work.

Where was he? Where was Misato? This had to be NERV, but aside from the light that shone down, coldly, from the tube's plug, there was only darkness. Beyond the limits of the tube there was nothing at all.

Why was he alone? What had happened? Shinji groped through recent memory, finding only a long gray dream. Him living without living, avoiding life and everything else beyond bare survival. Listening to Asuka talk at him and finding her words unremarkable and unworthy of response, even when she broke down and finally said what he had wanted to hear from her for so long. I care. Let me help you.

"Asuka!" his voice was distorted by the liquid, and he hammered the tube's side. Where was she? Someone had to be watching, right? He must be in some kind of extreme trauma unit. Had some kind of accident after the. That Angel. The 28th, had it been? The pyramid and the whip. He remembered fighting it, but could not seem to recall how he had won. Or if NERV had triumphed at all.

He looked down at himself. The flesh he could see around the harness was intact. No obvious damage, no psychosomatic bruising. His recovery had to be complete. He hammered the side of the tube again, wondering if the blackness beyond was vast or close. Was the tube in a chamber with no other source of light, or was he slotted into some sort of enclosure? Shinji unbuckled the vest and peeled it off, dropping to the bottom of the tube, which was curved and smooth. He pressed his face against the lowest point of the curve, but could make out nothing outside it. He could see the transparent material the tube was made out of, because it was curved and thick, and the edge was visible.

The top of the plug was featureless, without even a seam.

"Akagi!" he tried now. "Akagi, let me out!"

Was this some kind of experiment? How could they have just forgotten...

Red light appeared outside the tube, a faint glow that resolved first into three distinct blobs of color, and then two perfect circles across a crescent, forming a rough parody of a smiling face.

**You** said a voice Shinji remembered from the gray haze after the 28th Angel..

"Help me!" he shouted, not caring in the least about the thing's nature, whether it was a mask or something stranger.

...**damn** the voice gained inflection, and the crescent smile flattened into a line. **You survived. **

"Yeah, yeah, I'm alive!" Shinji was pressed up against the tube, close to the thing as he could get. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. The thing before him did not trouble him, per se, but its presence aroused in Shinji a terrible fear, a terrible sense... of time.

Asuka. Asuka, damn it. He had just gotten close to her, close enough to touch her. He wanted her right now. He wanted to kiss her angry face. She could be furious with him afterward, he didn't care. Because he wanted to kiss her, see? And he'd do whatever it took for her to want to kiss him back.

**You have been gone for ten years** the thing outside the tube lied.

Shinji spun around. Looked at the darkness on the other side of the tube. Empty, honest darkness. It was a lie. Somewhere overhead, Asuka was waiting at home, hating him for not being there to cook for her. Misato was dealing with the paperwork the fight with the 28th Angel had caused. Father would be doing... whatever it was that he did. Ayanami would be listening to the SDAT he had bought her last Christmas.

The lying red light floated into view again. Shinji tried to smack the tube walls in fury, but the LCL slowed him down. A lie. A lie. A LIE!

**It is not a lie** the thing said. And.

Shinji was somewhere else. It was dark, but not a close dark. He was standing under his own power on concrete, and dressed in his school uniform. LCL dripped from his hair. Light shone from overhead, white and clean, revealing the grass surrounding the sidewalk he was standing on.

"I'm sorry," said the person beside him. Shinji turned and jumped away, not out of surprise or shock, but by basic, blind instinct. The thing beside him was covered entirely in - or made out of - a shiny black material. Its face was smooth and featureless one moment, but a line of red light appeared on it, which quickly widened into a circle that seemed almost a hole in the face. There was a hint of depth within that bloody light.

This thing. It had opened an eye to look at Shinji, and now the other eye opened and the mouth appeared as a small mouth beneath. The thing had been standing beside him, eyes and mouth closed. Like it was...

Shinji turned to look at what the black thing had been praying to. It was a... there was a metal cube, a statue upon it. On the face of the cube a heavy brass plate was mounted, and that was covered in raised letters. Names. More than a hundred. More than five hundred. Maybe three thousand in total arranged in neat columns across the face of the cube. And the statue.

The statue was of Shinji. It was wearing his plugsuit, sitting on a rock, neural connector band in one hand, staring down. Its arms twisted in a way that projected agony.

"I wanted to make this world whole," the creature beside him was saying. Shinji absorbed every word, but didn't look at it. He was staring at the memorial. Approaching it.

"You left your reality. Your _prime_ reality, and it was poorer for the loss. I thought you were dead. I thought you were too broken, too far gone to come all the way back."

The creature's voice was distorted, but not the same as it had been outside the tube. There, it had seemed to rattle around inside his head. Here it was just a sorrowful voice, carried across the faint breeze that swept through the park. The memorial park.

"Ten years?" But Shinji knew. His words weren't intended as a question... maybe as the last gasp of a dying man, but not a question. The nightmare at his side seemed to understand.

"My," he ate the rest of it, getting close enough to the bronze sheet to start reading names. Fearing. Fearing who he'd find listed among the dead.

"Misato Katsuragi is alive," the creature called out from behind. "Rei Ayanami is alive. Asuka Langley Sohryu is still alive."

How did it know the names he wanted? No, it didn't matter. They were alive. Ten years gone, but they had survived. They.

It was like falling into a swoon. Shinji felt himself slip out of his body again. Not all the way out, just enough to see the world laid bare and transparent. Reaching out for something familiar. People he would recognize. What he found was... difficult.

There was Rei. She lived in Hokkaido now, in a block of teacher housing so... she must be teaching? The house was empty but for her, even this late at night. There was one car in the garage, a single futon. History papers written in young hand covered her desk as she worked, blue hair now long and pulled into a ponytail. Despite the mundane scene, there was still something more than human about her, and she turned to look over her shoulder where a splinter of Shinji's awareness hung. He fled.

There was Asuka. Distant. In... Germany? Shinji could not tell. Could not read the signs that flickered past as he sped to her location. She was standing over  
a  
crib.  
She was standing over a crib. There was a man beside her. It was theirs. They were in love. She had forgotten him. Buried him when the statue went up.

The image wasn't exactly real, but everything in it was true. Something in Shinji's new nature had picked out truth and shaped it in one cohesive, neat image. He could not see Asuka as she actually was, right now. He didn't want to.

Misato was. Another bastardized image, filled with truth. Another crib, another woman important to Shinji standing next to a man he did not know, looking down. There were twins in Misato's crib.

A hand closed on his shoulder, and Shinji dropped back into his body. The creature was at his side. Shinji blinked. It was daytime in the park now. He had been gone for a while.

"They're alive," he moaned. "And that is. Good."

He didn't mean it. Not a word of it. Those people weren't his friends. They had forgotten about him. Left him to rot in a tube in some dark sub-basement of the Geo-Front. He was just a distant memory, more a fact than an image in their minds. Each had once known a boy named Shinji Ikari. There was a statue of him commemorating a war in which they had fought but... he had nothing to do with their lives. There was no hint of his existence in anything they did. No pictures of him anywhere that he could sense. Not even a fucking shrine - he'd be able to smell the incense, if there was.

Shinji smashed a fist into the memorial's bronze plaque. Dead and gone. He was simply not there anymore. A kid walking to school half a mile away was looking down at the old Angel Wars memorial and wondering at the weirdo banging on it all by himself. A few early morning joggers had noticed his body standing transfixed before the statue - though none had noticed his similarity to it. Six people had noticed Shinji since he had been brought to the park, and he could feel their attention linger upon him, even though the kid was the only one of the six still present.

No one else. He could taste the truth. No one had said his name aloud in over six years.

Dead and gone. Ten years.

"I should have let you fade to nothing," the creature murmured beside him.

Shinji nodded in agreement.

Father was dead. Shinji did not know how. Didn't much care. Touji and Kensuke... he couldn't even find them. They had grown into something entirely unfamiliar to him. Maya Ibuki was working for in a corporate office building in Tokyo 2. Ritsuko Akagi was dead. Unit One had been destroyed.

He had been crying for a while now, tears streaming down his face. The Katsuragi apartment was gone. Pen Pen was... he was actually still alive, but probably wouldn't recognize Shinji.

He looked down at his hands. They were bloody. He had been smacking the raised lettering on the bronze plaque quite hard.

"Other worlds," he muttered to himself. "There are other worlds. I saw them. I can..."

**No** the voice sounded inside his head. **You cannot_._**

"This is. Stop. I," Shinji tried to shake the echo of those words out of his head. "I don't fit here anymore. I'm not right. I can't. I _can't help but see them_!"

"You cannot leave be allowed to wander between realities," the creature said in a saner voice. "Your presence in another world would be destabilizing. Adjustments would have to be made. No adjustments have been authorized in your case."

"Then. I don't want to _wander_!" Shinji screamed the last word. "That was the point. That was why I was here. I thought I was done with running. I. I just want to go home!"

He fell to his knees. Thought about attacking the creature, but what was the point. He stared into the sky and tried to lose himself in the passing clouds. Eventually settled with his back against the monument.

"There may be a way," the creature finally said. Shinji waited.

"Your presence may be required on another world, at some point in the future. If you still exist, you will be shuttled from this reality to another. You will be given the opportunity to render aide. If you execute upon that opportunity, you may be granted a boon. Which could include matriculating you into a reality of our choosing."

"May be," Shinji repeated, voice hollow. "May be required."

The creature paused. "It will be," it finally said. "If you are still alive, we will take you."

"Some point in the future," Shinji again repeated a line of the creature's statement.

"Time is relative. This world is oriented off-of parallel from the Locus. For every day that passes there, ten pass here. The event is set to occur within three months, at least."

Nine hundred days. Three years, just about. Three years in this place.

Shinji didn't reply to the creature, just lowered his head until his chin was against his chest. Closed his eyes. More-or-less passed out on the spot, sleeping against the memorial, dreaming of betrayal and teenage lust, and of his missing decade. The creature crouched down in front of him and took off its mask. Shinji regarded Shinji, his face betraying nothing less than total sadness. He touched a finger to his sleeping self's forehead, transmuting bitter dreams into ones of possibility and guarded hope. Someone had to introduce the notion to the kid that he was still alive, and that meant leaving him to stew in more than the mere particulars of his immediate situation. There were other people to meet. Other girls to fall in love with. Shinji's awakening had not gone unnoticed. His life would get complicated in the future, in all kinds of wonderful ways. Even now the tube that had held his body was sending out signals on every available frequency, letting whoever had inherited responsibility for it know that it was empty. That Shinji Ikari was alive again.

"Three years," the Weaver murmured, pulling his mask back on. "More than enough time to come back to life."

He took one last look around, contacted the Locus, and designated this reality #137. Status of Ikari: Active.


	4. 04

**Beneath

* * *

**

Chapter Four

* * *

Asuka had been first, and that had been gratifying. Three hours after Shinji's identity had been disclosed to the media, she had tried to get in touch. International call, video feed attached. Shinji had instructed the lawyer, Kamesena, to handle it. Though he had been in the same room, Shinji had not looked at the feed, or made any effort to listen in to her side of the conversation. Kamesena had delivered a speech identical in every way to the press release they had already issued, and politely deflected Asuka's questions, which became more urgent and angry as the call went on.

Misato had come second, a full day after his face had been splashed on every information feed in Japan. Shinji had not been there at the time, but Kamesena had assured him it had been taken care of in an identical manner, save the addition of a bitter and honest greeting Shinji had previously scripted for Katsuragi alone. His former guardian had called the lawyer a liar and hung up.

Eventually, nearly everyone he had known during the Angel War had tried to contact Shinji at some point in the last six months. With one glaring exception.

One _terrifying_ exception.

It had taken Shinji Ikari more than six months to visit Rei.

And here he was, in Hokkaido, about as far north as one could get without tumbling into the sea. He was sitting on the hood of his car, eating a bento and staring blankly ahead. Waiting. The day was clear and cold. A cellphone was balanced on his knee beside the bento, ruby-red and dull in the September light.

The car was parked in front of the Shippou Keitei Institute for the Deaf, where Rei Ayanami worked. Shinji's dark blue eyes were not focused on anything in particular, just taking in the splashes of color between the bars of the fence that surrounded the school, listening to distant voices. Conversation and laughter, but...

The laughter beyond the fence was wrong. Sounded wrong. The students did not know what their own voices sounded like. Could not refine pitch and tone. Shinji had that sort of disconnect, or what he imagined that disconnect must be like. He lived in constant confusion. No subtext. No history. All he had was sweet existence and selfish vengeance against the world. Against the people he had known, who had so easily forgotten him.

The coast was more than a mile distant, but he could hear the ocean anyway. It was there, just as loud as the atonal laughter - the constant collapse of water against sand. There did not seem to be a pause for the crashing tide to spread out. To Shinji's ear there was just and only the beating waves, the relentless fall. There was a stink on the chilled breeze too, petrochemicals and fishrot and nanochaff - a type of pollution that had not existed when Shinji had been properly alive.

He closed his eyes. Imagined the ocean was a colossal, wounded Angel, clawing away at the earth in its death throes, lashing out to scar and cut and slice and maim. The voices through the fence warped with that thought, turning sour, into screams...

That image was something he could understand. The present day? Not so much.

* * *

It had taken him a while to come all the way back from the dread sorrow of emerging suddenly, ten years into the future. But now he was almost all back. Nearly... normal. Since waking up at the foot of the Angel War memorial and realizing he was stranded, Shinji had been building a delicate latticework of emotion and selective memory to counterbalance despair and, he suspected, absolute madness. This mental construct had now developed to the point where he could now hold conversations without totally losing interest and the will to continue midway through, and his hate - at the world, the people he had cared for, everything - was now something he could control. Most of the time.

The lawsuits had helped. The process of coming back to life after a ten year absence was without true legal precedent. Add an assumption of unlawful detention by a UN-mandated organization? Turned out that could generate a lot of liability, even in the government body that essentially regulated all the world's collective wealth.

So by the time Shinji finally went to visit Rei Ayanami up in Shikinomi, Hokkaido, he was one of the richest people in the country. Between the release of family assets, the rights to his mother's patents, and the settlements his lawyer had been able to secure from the bio-tech firm that had unknowingly taken responsibility for his body ten years ago, Shinji had more money than he knew what to do with. This was the best possible outcome for all concerned, though the people paying out probably didn't realize it.

Shinji had picked up all kinds of power when he slipped outside the world. Vast and ill-defined and largely untested. Getting retribution by way of legal procedure was the most savage and insipid and _satisfying_ form of assault he could imagine that did not involve the ripping of flesh and the shucking of steaming bones off _everything in sight all the time twisting and tearing and yes screams..._

Six months of that. Six months waking up wanting to mutilate the wrongness that surrounded him. Six months of nothing but hate. He was finally able to appreciate what Asuka must have gone through after the 17th. Or was it the 16th? The Angel that had stayed in orbit and messed with her head. Being so full of rage it felt like bits of himself were spilling out, lost forever. He would have loved to convey that new understanding, but _his_ Asuka was ten years gone.

And now here Shinji was in Shikinomi, at the school where Rei taught. Trying not to hate. Trying to level out.

* * *

The school was... modern. All glass and polished wood. Looked like a toy, really. The metal fencing that wrapped around the school struck Shinji as an excellent metaphor for the school's intent. Guarded fragility, see? Protecting broken, incomplete children.

It was almost time. He got off the hood and walked to one side of the property gate and paced until the clockwork built into the main building's face began to chime in a low tone, something more felt than heard. School was out.

He dialed a number into his phone, and gingerly pressed it to an ear, heart pounding. Afraid of hearing her voice. Thinking: I should pretend I'm not here just yet; I just happened to be passing by; I called her too soon, should have given her five minutes to dismiss class; what the Hell am I thinking, just showing up unannounced...

"Yes," the voice came before the first ring was complete, cool and high.

"Ayanami?" his own voice did not fail, but it was a close thing.

"Yes?" this time the question was audible. There was annoyance beneath it.

"Its Shinji." A pause. "Shinji Ikari."

There was no response. At two seconds of silence, Shinji found himself fighting down the rage. If the next words out of Ayanami's mouth did not in some way alleviate the pressure building behind his eyes, he was going to have to leave and drive his new, gleaming Honda to a coastal ruin and smash it into something sturdy. Because this...

This was the last thread connecting him to the past. It was the only thing that kept him anchored in the senseless now. The only thing that made him hide and drink himself safe when the red haze descended and the impulse to reach out and hurt _anyone and everyone as much as he could_ was locked firmly in place.

He shouldn't be here. He should have left this alone. This... this was dangerous.

Rei's next words were maddenly neutral. "Where are you?"

"I'm outside," he replied, fighting to keep the building anger out of his voice. "At the gate."

There was a clatter on the other end of the line, and the connection went dead.

He waited. For as long as the growing red allowed him. Children streamed past, some looking with curiosity at the boy in the suit, sitting on the hood of a car that surely was not his, head in hands. Shinji waited until the pressure behind his eyes grew to the point that he started wondering what sound kids made when you broke. their. little. arms.

If he stayed, the thoughts would get even darker, and he wouldn't feel at all bad about having them. If he stayed, he was quite certain he would be capable of gleeful murder and worse, starting with the children at the gate and working back to wherever in the building Rei was _hiding_.

So Shinji left. Crumpled the cellphone to sand and got into the Honda and drove out of Shikonomi and onto the Express. It took nearly two hours of stomach-twisting curves around the fucking Shikki mountains, everything drenched in that red rage, before he spotted a likely place to release the murderous impulse festering inside him.

* * *

The town was called Sapporo and it was just barely there. This had been a city once, before Second Impact, but now there were just a meager boulevard lit up against the gathering dusk, huddled in the corner of a great urban ruin that spanned many miles across. Shinji could trace the limits of the dead city in his mind.

Perfect, he thought, and the red haze swelled at the promise of release.

He pulled off and coasted down the ramp. Did not even try to brake at the bottom. The pressure behind his eyes had been deferred long enough. It wanted blood and pain.

The car took the curve at nearly 80KPM and was briefly on two wheels, frame screaming as it began to warp. Then the car hit and bounced off the guard rail, sending it into a spin. The front axle broke. The driver-side window lost an argument with Shinji's head as it whipped through the safety glass. And then the car hit the opposite guard rail, grinding against it for perhaps thirty feet before at last coming to a stop.

Barely a rest stop, Shinji thought through the rage as he took in the energy station, the scattering of shops, the small collection of homes built short and close together beneath the Express. I bet it could vanish and no one would notice.

Images of what seemed like revenge flitted through Shinji's mind. The pressure continued to build as he raced down the town's main street, glimpsing life in the buildings he passed and imagining all the spectacular ways in which it might be pulled apart.

The town of Sapporo was not separated from the urban ruin surrounding it by so much as a traffic cone. It was a simple matter of driving down the main street and coasting through an un-manned security gate. He stopped on the other side, where the town's light grew dim. Got out and went to the trunk. Pulled out his 'emergency duffel,' checked the contents, and then stashed it just inside a broken display window in a derelict hardware store. This was, as Kamesena liked to say of trial procedure, not his first rodeo.

Back in the car, he got out an SDAT - not _his_ SDAT, that was long lost - and put the ear buds in. Started up Lux Aeterna and took one last look around, marking the location.

As Mansell's opening swelled, ready to pop, Shinji stomped down on the accelerator.

The Honda was a luxury model, not built for speed. It took Shinji a good forty seconds to get up to 120 km per hour, the car's operating limit. The red haze covered everything, so thick he could barely see, but it was still the easiest thing in the world for him to lash out and obliterate the concrete pylons that had been stabbed in the road at regular intervals to discourage exactly what it was that he was doing. The Lux Aeterna's intro haunted Shinji through the corridor of darkened buildings. And at last, when he was good and lost in the maze of streetgrid, Shinji allowed the rage to swarm over his brain, to settle in its wrinkles and really soak in.

Suffer the little children. Tiny arms folding back on themselves. Small, stupid, round faces opening their mouths to dribble out idiot sounds. Ayanami screaming in anguish, perhaps equal to what Shinji had experienced at the foot of the Angel War memorial. And when he was done with all the little bastards, she would be made to rutt in the gore-covered classroom...

Shinji threw up. It was the only thing a decent person could manage, at this very vivid suggestion. Ayanami down and bruised, legs spread, surrounded by bits of tiny people. The car's path jogged slightly with his spasm, but continued to accelerate. This wasn't over. The haze was still thick, and the world and all the people in it were crumbling at his feet. Lux Aeterna was his anthem, spreading on ahead of Shinji like a great blight.

He could stop the car in a long arc of burnt tread. Turn around, try to find his way back into town. There had been 236 people there when he passed through. He could seal off the Express exit and have some fun. Real fun. The sort that left behind only twisted bodies and terrified telephone calls hanging in the sky.

Screams. The cooling warmth of splashed blood on his skin. The squeal of a body as it was contorted, joints and bones snapping, flesh stretching and then ripping with a sound like pummeled fruit. These images and sensations passed through Shinji like an erotic display, or the smell of miso soup prepared just right. He wanted some of that. Would not be satisfied until it was his. The pheremone release of a person that knew they were about to die? Right now, a whiff of that seemed more potent and alluring than the promise of sex with Asuka had been ten years ago.

Insanity crawled through him, roosted in him, took control of his mouth and forced a crazed giggle. But it never stayed. And it never forced itself on him. So far, Shinji had always been able to hold it in check until it was safe to release. He always had a choice, and so far had been able to resist the attraction of actually carrying out sweet and bloody vengeance. But now that he knew that Rei wanted nothing to do with him, what was the point? This world was exhausting. From Shinji's point of view, making it go away, even only a bit at a time, would be a relief. Just wipe it all out and wait in the blank void for the black thing with red eyes to return.

His entire existence was not rage. It only _seemed _that way, when the rage was upon him. No, in fact, Shinji's state of mind vassilated, between rage and despair. Both came with their own brand of madness. And every time he was swung from one state to the limit of the other, it seemed to take longer for the metaphorical pendulum to swing back. How long could he resist these violent urges of rage, or the bliss of being unmade that totally embracing despair seemed to promise? And again, why even fight it? Why not just end it?

The Honda began to whine, and Shinji saw the speedometer had finally reached it's leftmost extremity. Showtime. He cackled, eyes shining with an inner light, and removed the force that had been holding the car's broken axle level.

One wheel was ripped away. The car swerved as the front bumper began eating itself, levering the rest of the frame upwards... and then the shiny 2029 Honda ES-6Xtt collided with a traffic pylon. There was a great deal of flying, twisting, and the spitsnap of the car battery discharging. Shinji cracked his skull on the steering wheel and managed a dislocated shoulder as his body slammed against the safety belt.

"Its all wrong!" he cackled at the apex of the poor Honda's flight, a ghastly smile sliced into his face. The world was twisted. Upside down. Pointless. The Kronos Quartet were sawing into Shinji's brain as the car hit the pavement and crumpled.

He woke up as Lux Aeterna was sliding into Dark Was The Night. The car was tight around him, his legs encased in twisted metal. The steering wheel had caved in his ribs, and a sliver of windshield frame had sliced off an ear. The darkness was absolute as Shinji listened to the throaty twang of a banjo in the hands of a violinist, a rattle that went on and on until it was joined by a smooth-screaming cello sounding like an old, dry ghost.

And he felt something very much like fear, sitting crushed in a car, miles from any hope of aide. He was surrounded by ruins, by nothing but black and black and starlight. Block upon block of streets, filled with suffocating emptiness and silent, save for the stream of music from the SDAT's one remaining earbud and the now-distant, perhaps imagined, echo of the car slamming into the road. Dark was the night, indeed.

Shinji waited in the black as his body repaired itself. The car moaned as his legs straightened out without regard to the warped heavy aluminum should have held them immobile. Flesh flowed. The splintered ends of bone grew back together. There was a burst of mental static as something in his brain was made right again.

When he was mobile, Shinji pulled the one remaining earbud free and set about rending the car as close to directly down the middle as he could eyeball. At the trunk he ripped out the motive battery, already half discharged, and let the current pass through him and into the car. From there, the errant energy must have followed an even stranger route, because the darkened lamposts nearby briefly blazed to life, probably for the first time in more than twenty years.

And for a brief moment Shinji was not angry, anguished, or afraid. The street lit up around him, and it was as though he were piloting Eva again. Doing something magical, that only he could do.

But then lights dimmed, and then went out entirely, leaving Shinji night blind. The dark? Thicker and more absolute than ever. The Angel War was over, and quickly becoming myth. NERV had been dissolved. Father had been killed by... who knew?

Though it had been briefly postponed - first by fear and then by wonder - with his rage spent, sorrow followed. This had been the cycle of Shinji's existence for the last six months after all, if you didn't count the long periods of profound intoxication. Not much of a life, either way.

He had loved Rei. He had chosen to go after Asuka, to try to begin something, you know, _physical_ with her, but he had still loved Rei in a simple way. Would have died for her. He had thought Rei felt much the same.

But however she had felt, that Rei was gone. Like everything else in this miserable world, something that was almost Rei had taken her place. He had assumed she had been waiting for him to come to her, that her silence had been special. But really, it seemed that Rei Ayanami at age 25 would rather pretend he did not exist.

Why? For some people he seemed to be a living injury. His sudden existence reminded them of their own losses during the Angel War. And from what he had gathered, skimming Asuka's appeal for contact, hearing he was alive after so long was almost as painful as losing him in the first place. Maybe Rei felt that way. Or... no, it didn't matter. Ten years. He didn't even have ten years of memories in his head. They had all been different people, back then. Who knows what they might have become, if Shinji had been able to hold the soul rot at bay? For all he knew, these men Misato and Asuka were with, that could just be destiny. Honestly, what did a person know at 15 that couldn't change in a heartbeat?

Shinji scaled a derelict hotel, clearing thirty stories with little more than a thought and peering out across the ruin, seeking out the illumination of tiny Sapporo. The sudden vertical movement did a good job of drying his eyes.

Part of him wanted to stay in this dead place, to hide among the ruins and go so deep he would never have to see sunlight again. Let the world forget him a second time. Let him forget all about the world.

Unfortunately, Shinji was, at the moment, quite hungry. The bitter satisfaction of being forgotten a second time would have to wait until his stomach was full. For all the inhuman abilities he had returned to the world with, Shinji was still reliant on food for energy. And having to eat was a blessing. Nothing like the pain of starvation to kick you out of a bleak quandry of loathing and self-doubt.

It took about ten minutes to get back to Sapporo and the emergency duffel he had left in the broken shopfront. His clothes had been ripped to tatters in the crash, so he changed into spares from the duffel. There was also a wallet with ten mon in there, and a good thing too, because the one in Shinji's pocket had been ripped in half after the steering column had tried its very best to take off his leg.

He changed into namebrand clothes the same color scheme as his old school uniform. Ripped off the hair that had been burnt from the motive battery's current. Boiled away the splashes of vomit, and their smell. Applied deodorant. When his appearance was within acceptable human norms, Shinji stowed his SDAT - remarkably undamaged, except for the missing earbud - slung the duffel over his shoulder, and slouched into town.

It was dark enough to fly or take to the rooftops, but Shinji settled on walking down the middle of the street in a wounded gait, wanting to be recognized and feared as something that had just come out of the ruins. A petty vengeance against the world, for that moment of fear he had felt in the crumpled car.

But no one paid him much mind. The street was deserted, and most of the shops were closed. Even the constable's post appeared empty, it's windows dark. Shinji's gait straightened and lengthened as it became apparent that no one was watching.

Residences stretched away from the main street and under the Express, as though living beneath something that modern counterbalanced the proximity of the ruins. Even though the rage was no longer on him, Shinji felt like giving this place a real, proper haunting. Maybe manifest some old injuries and stagger down a residential street, moaning. Or maybe stitch some ghosts together out of ambient energy and electromagnetism.

But he was hungry and tired. Even if he could have dredged up a special animosity for this pissant little scrap of civilization, he just didn't have the energy to do much beyond walk. Maybe a few big jumps, maybe a short flight. But he felt like walking.

The noodle shop was halfway down the town's length and made of bright plastic. It looked like something from a children's playground, only made indecently huge. The last decade had certainly produced some grotesque oddities.

Inside were booths and a conveyor belt looping the open kitchen. Every visible surface was made of the same sort of plastic as the exterior, though someone had been kind enough to paint most of the interior with earth tones. The cook waved Shinji's way as he walked in, but no one else paid him any mind.

Shinji sat in a booth against the conveyor belt, selecting the location so as to satisfy his appetite which, for someone of his size and stature, was quite large. He could eat half his body-weight without actually gaining more than three pounds - the standard variation in weight of a healthy person following a large meal, he had come to find out - his body putting on all the appearances of normalcy while something very, very odd happened inside it.

Shinji had also chosen this particular location because there was a couple by the picture window who seemed to be having a lot of fun with a family-style stir fry, and he wished to avoid looking at them.

From the conveyor belt he snatched up a plate of seafood sushi, a bowl of rice with a side of sliced ginger, a bowl of acceptable-smelling miso soup, and a platter of chilled udon with dipping sauce. A very polite waitress who was two years past pretty came up to correct Shinji's misunderstanding of the conveyor belt selection policy. No doubt she assumed he meant to sample from each. Idiot. He slapped a mon down on the table and told her he wanted a pot of green tea.

As he waited for the waitress to return, not wanting to start the meal without tea, a party of kids his own apparent age came in and sat down right behind him. They were very loud. Shinji pulled the SDAT from his bag and put in the remaining earbud, skipping ahead to Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. He imagined playing the cello part, which had been omitted from this recording. His old cello was gone, of course, but he had found another in the attic of the Ikari compound in Murakami, where he now lived.

Apparently, mother had played as well.

The tea arrived. Shinji breathed it in to check it's freshness and... Asuka! The scent of his former roommate was here, right now, in this room! It was mingled with the meaty freshness of good tea. God, he had forgotten...

He twisted around, looking for the familiar hair and eyes and pink skin. Nothing. No one. Just the noodle shop patrons that had been there when he arrived, and the kids that had come in soon after. They looked to be in high school or university - Shinji could not tell which. All girls. One of them saw him looking, and glared. Right.

His body had not grown in that tube deep underground. Shinji Ikari still had the appearance of a willowy fifteen-year-old boy. His appearance was not remarkable in any way, and while he was slowly learning the fine art of body language, he still carried himself with an undeniably defensive bent, especially now, when he was more sad than angry.

In other words, he looked like a wimp. Still.

Here, his apparent youth marked him as a local, since it was of course impossible for a boy his age to drive. The girl that had glared at him - who was in fact still glaring at him, as Shinji's examination of her likely perceptions had taken no more than a heartbeat - thought she was being oggled by a backwards Hokkaido hick. The irony was delicious, but...

He leaned over the booth divide, deliberately looking at each girl in turn. None were Asuka. But one of them smelled exactly like her. So familiar. Something immimicably associated with his attraction to her. This was painful.

By now the other girl across the table had joined the first in trying to kill him with an angry glare. The two with their backs to him appeared to be unaware that they were being examined. None said anything to him.

"Excuse me," Shinji began. "Does anyone here use a Niyo brand shampoo?" Do they even make it anymore?

He spoke clearly, without any trace of unease. Because even when he was depressed, no one in this rotten future was worthy of fear. Rei had been the only person he had dared to hope for, and how had that ended?

The girl that had first glared at him spoke first. She had pastel red highlights in her hair and was wearing a shirt that proudly announced she was a 'Tennessee Cowboy.' Her eyes were a dark brown, her face heavily made up. Her tits were large, and the outline of her bra and the bump of her left nipple were both defined clearly on her shirt.

"Excuse me?" she said, as though to intimidate by repeating Shinji's polite opener.

"Shampoo." Shinji repeated with outward patience. "Or maybe a lilac soap?"

The girl with the red highlights - call her "Red" - smiled prettily and made a complicated hand gesture. Probably telling Shinji to go fuck himself. As Red was completing the arcane display, the girl sitting just in front of him gave a start. Ah. She turned around, a confirmation on her lips. Shinji smelled her. Smelled Asuka. Lilac and eucalyptus and... something else.

The girl that smelled like Asuka had shoulder-length black hair, which framed a rather unfortunate face, with a large nose and blotchey skin. Her eyes though. They were blue, Shinji's shade of blue, and he could see the irises tighten as she saw him. He wondered what she was thinking.

She was nodding. "Um, yeah," she replied in a terribly-toned voice. "I... I use Konohan and Koala."

Shinji winced at the girl's strange manner of speech and filed the names away for later. There was still something missing. Something underneath it. Powdery. Wait. What sort of deodorant had Asuka used?

"Maito, yes?" Shinji stabbed a finger at the girl, who was still staring at him, expression guarded.

"What?" Red asked for her.

"Deodorant. Is that what you're wearing?" he did not look at Red. "Maito?"

"Woman's Dry," the girl squeaked in her horrible voice, before turning away. Hair had fallen forward over her eyes. What he could see of her face had turned a remarkable shade of red. The girl across from her giggled, which didn't seem to help things at all.

Huh. Well, he had not meant to humiliate her.

"Thank you, miss," Shinji said with deliberate politeness, then turned back to his food. Konohan, koala, maito. Those were the three things needed to reproduce her smell. He would have to get some later, see how it...

"Well?"

He looked up. The girl with red highlights was at the end of his table. Two of her companions were leaning over the booth partition in a way that was probably meant to be intimidating. To project exactly how intimidated he was, Shinji began to pull up some chilled udon before responding.

Had they moved quickly, or had he just zoned out? Time could be a funny thing in Shinji's head. Especially when he was hungry. When he focused, the world slowed to a crawl. But after that there was sort of a snap-back effect, the instant his focus wavered. He may have lost as much as twenty seconds just now, as Red and her friends had closed in.

"Well what?" he replied evenly, dipping his noodles into the sauce which, it turned out, was quite spicy.

"Well, why the fuck is my little sister crying in the bathroom right now?" Red did not seem mad. Almost bored. Annoyed that she was being forced to act like a big sister. Probably not something she relished doing in front of her friends. Shinji turned slightly to make sure the girl that smelled like Asuka was indeed gone. Huh.

He ate a mouthful of udon before replying. "How would I know?"

"Because you did it, asshole," Red sighed. "Look, if you like the way she smells so much, you should ask her over."

"Here," Shinji stated flatly. Well, this was certainly not the pissed-off sister act he had been expecting. She was doing it wrong.

"Yeah, she comes back, just turn around and ask her if she wants to share a booth."

Shinji ate another bit of udon. Briefly peered outside himself to verify that there was, in fact, a girl crying in the noodle shop restroom. Sighed.

"What are you supposed to be anyway?" one of the other girls wanted to know. She was shaking a hand at his large selection of food, several bangles at her wrist clinking together. "You training for an eating contest or something?"

Shinji ate another mouthful of udon, realizing with some disappointment that there was barely any left. The portions here were ridiculous. He slathered the rest of the dipping sauce on the meager remains and ate it.

"Maybe he's an idiot," said the third girl, the one that had laughed at the crying girl's shame. "Or cooking up drugs out in Old Sapporo."

"Is that what they call the ruins?" Shinji queried before draining his cup of green tea. "Old Sapporo? Huh."

"Definitely an idiot," the third girl repeated. "Coming to a place and not knowing what it's called."

"Its dead," Shinji continued to reply in an even tone. "It doesn't need a proper name. Call it a graveyard and just be done with it."

Something inside him flinched. Hypocrisy clawed at his insides. Because, after all...

I'm living in just such a place, aren't I? Living in a place filled with meaningless words etched into stone, a place that can never change because it is literally history. The Angel War. Misato's apartment. Asuka. Rei. Father. Evangelion. The meaning of all of them, it's all changed since then. I'm living in the dark, in the graveyard, and it's made me strong and strange and awful.

He might as well have been cooking up drugs in the ruins.

Red was speaking. He ignored her, eating an eel sushi and staring intently foreward. Unexpected mental alchemy was happening, as Shinji's despair seized on the notion that living in the past was fruitless and empty, and began to eat away at his resentment toward the present. The very basis of Shinji's depression was rotting out it's own foundation.

His mind was slowly opening to the concept of living in the present. It was the first time since his return that he had felt this way.

And then the crying girl was suddenly sitting across from him, and Shinji realized he had lost another gap of time.

"Noko, this isn't funny," the girl that smelled like Asuka complained in her un-toned voice as she tried to get up. Red pushed her back down.

"I want some time with my friends, you little cretin," Red hissed, scowling. "Stay here and make this guy buy you something with his drug money. Don't worry, he's too fried to try anything."

Laughter. The girl across from him turned a deep blush, but, amazingly, did not immediately get up as Red left. Shinji began to focus on her. Stopped. He was losing time too often. The food obviously had not made it into his system yet, or the bursts forward would have ceased. Better to just... Huh.

He actually wanted to _talk_ with this girl. When had he last felt that compulsion? Quite infrequently during the first 15 years of his life. Asuka and Rei had...

And all at once Rei's betrayal was turning his stomach, sapping his strength. The first person he had wanted to protect, the first girl he had managed to work up the nerve to talk to. Seeing her smile. Watching her die. Discovering her a second time. All gone. Potential wasted. A foregone conclusion deferred and. And she must hate him as the others did. Misato, Asuka, Maya, Touji. His death had been a viscious little emptiness she had learned to ignore over the course of a decade, only to have it flayed wide by his return. Nothing but. Nothing but...

The mental alchemy going on within Shinji had been somewhat distracted by the subject of Rei, but not entirely. It had continued to undermine the bitterness he felt toward his missing decade, eventually to the point that he just stopped in mid-thought. Suddenly, Rei became history, distant and unimportant to the here and now. She did not like him? That was too bad, but still. She had nothing to do with this noodle shop, the food on the table, or the girl sitting across from him. Rei drifted to the back of his mind, and Shinji returned to the subject of sharing. Of wanting to share.

Asuka had been the last person he had felt that way about, of course. That night he had dared to touch Asuka's hand... But his interest in this girl was not intrinsically romantic. Just part of a sudden desire to be open.

"S-sorry about before," Shinji stammered. Stammered? Really? "Its just that, you smell like someone I used to know."

The girl was looking down at the table. She said nothing in reply.

"_Would_ you like something?" he used an inflection on the first word, linking it back to Red's dismissive instructions to her little sister. "You can get something from the belt..."

Still no response. The girl put her hands on the table, curled and uncurled them into fists. No apparent interest in the food on the table or the conveyor.

"Uh, what is your name, miss?" Maybe the polite tack would work?

The girl remained silent. Shinji ate a scalloped sushi. Huh.

"You would not believe the car I came here in," Shinji tried again as he poured himself a cup of tea. "It was black and had a leather interior. The guy that sold..."

The waitress came up with a second tea cup for the nameless girl. The girl looked up as the woman listed off specials. In a voice that was obviously being carefully modulated, the girl asked for a glass of water and Western-style noodles in tomato sauce. The scraps of speech she used sounded guarded. Or maybe "wounded," would describe it better. She was clearly miserable and...

Wait.

"You..." Shinji began, then made sure he had the girl's attention, that she could see his lips, "you're deaf, aren't you?"

The girl nodded, drawing back the hair that fell past her ear to reveal hearing aides. "I can hear just enough to read lips," she explained slowly, in what seemed a rehearsed tone.

Shinji's heart had stopped the moment she had acknowledged being deaf. He was peering outside himself, for any scrap or marker of interference from an outside source. Something else was at work here. Something was going on. It was too much of a coincidence.

But all the world laid bare revealed was the shape of the girl's soul. He was not entirely certain what to look for, but there was nothing obviously amiss. Her soul was more white than Shinji's own crackling gold - a distinction he did not know what to make of - but it did not appear to be tainted, or in any way manipulated.

Nothing. This is a coincidence, he told himself. After Rei, after almost going crazy wanting to kill the students at the Institute for the Deaf. It is a total coincidence that...wait.

"C-can you understand me?" Shinji asked.

The girl's embarassment quickly gave over to annoyance. "I said I could read lips," she repeated in a less-rehearsed tone. "I am deaf, not an idiot."

Shinji was smiling humorlessly, desparately. "Sorry, I... what was your name, Miss?"

The girl looked off to one side. Projecting evasive behavior. He could sort of understand, her not wanting to give her name to a drug peddler. Just as Shinji was about to suggest she give him a fake name, simply so he would have something to call her, she looked back to him. Seemed to study him a long moment. As she did, Shinji was surprised to find her... well, not pretty, but if not for the acne, this girl might be at least handsome. She was wearing a blouse, a very light blue in color, and a small tan shawl. She reminded Shinji of the old class rep, Hikari Horaki.

"I'm Naoko," she said, then pointed without looking to where her sister was seated, at a table by the shop entrance. "My sister is Nokora. Her friends are Shiki and Fuki."

Her speech was better now. Either common bits of conversation were something she had learned to speak properly, or she was putting more effort into sounding normal.

There was a pause. Naoko volunteered nothing else. Shinji gestured at the bowl of miso, then the bowl of rice. "Would you like either of these? I can't really..."

"What is your name?" she interrupted, then started making gestures Shinji now recognized as sign language before quickly giving up. She seemed frustrated. "I..." she began. "You are familiar. I have seen you before."

Ah shit.

There was nothing really remarkable about Shinji's appearance, except for his blue eyes. This meant that, despite a good deal of media exposure, he had been able to go wherever he liked without any fear of being recognized. After he told her his name - and he would, he decided - what would happen? Shinji did not know, and he had a burning question that needed answering before things became uncertain.

"Before that," Shinji began, trying to brush her question aside for now. "Could I ask: do you live..."

"You know my name," the words came from Naoko in a rush, all pretense at correct tone gone. "Who are you. Who has my sister abandoned me to?" Bitter anger behind her voice, threatening to spill over. At being left behind, at being forced into a strange situation. All things which were painfully easy for Shinji to relate to.

Fear and uncertainty were creeping back into Shinji's being. He was feeling cornered. But maybe. Maaaaybe he'd get lucky.

"My name is Shinji."

Another silence. Shinji finished the last of the seafood sushi, then ate the decorative garnish of pickled ginger and wasabi. Naoko was not looking at him in a way he could understand.

"You..." she finally broke the silence, only to lapse back into it. Her elbows were on the table now, hands clasped as though in benediction. Shinji endured this all with a projected air of nonchalance. He was just Shinji. One of many.

My family name? Well I don't actually have any family so...

"What did you say to her?" the girl finally managed. "She just... collapsed."

An insane grin was spreading across Shinji's face.

"You are from Shikimori," he said.

Naoko nodded.

"You go to the Institute for the Deaf."

Another nod.

"Your teacher's name is Rei Ayanami."

"She was saying your name before we could get her to wake up," Naoko said, her speech neutral but her expression one of... what, dammit. What? Wonder?

"She is afraid of me," Shinji said, too petrified at the possibility of confirmation to make it a question.

"I do not know," Naoko replied. "She did not elaper... elaborate on her emotional state after waking. She laughed it off and dismissed the class."

Rei is laughing now?

"We saw you on the news," Naoko continued. "Is it true, about the tube?"

"No," Shinji replied. First time he had been honest, when posed that question. He had done an interview with NTV and a European news agency called BBC. He had described his confinement differently to each agency, telling NTV, first, that it had been like a long dream. But to the BBC, Shinji had said that he was awake and aware most of the time, and that his body was kept fresh and young due to total submersion in a well-documented medical regenerative - LCL. With some glee, he had described years of scrabbling at the tube's sides and walls, of forgetting and then finding his name in the cramped corners of his isolated mind. Nothing but an endless, unceasing, undying nightmare. If the circuitry in the tube's hatch had not shorted out due to a gradual build up of moisture, he might have remained beneath the ground for another decade. Fifty years. A century.

The lies were the product of Shinji's emotional cycle. He had been depressed for the NTV interview and given the very pretty talk-show hostess a rather flaccid 'asleep and dreaming' coma trope, because he just barely had the will to hold up his end of the conversation. For the BBC interview he had been angry and wanted to spread fear and horror for no other reason than that he found the world too content, too in need of a good upsetting. He had described first waking up in that damn tube, and how seconds became minutes became hours became days became weeks became months became years became a fucking decade. The interviewer had gone pale midway through, as Shinji described in laborous detail every single aspect of the tube, with a sort of intensity to detail that just could not be considered sane.

The disparity between NTV and BBC interviews had unexpectedly worked in his favor. Many people assumed the NTV interview had been interferred with by the Japanese government, in an attempt to minimize public support for the lawsuits Shinj's lawyer was firing at anyone who seemed to have a shred of liability owed to him. This perceived manipulation caused support to blossom, even in the face of denial by the government and every member of the NTV corporation. Overwhelming public outcry meant most of Shinji's efforts for restitution, even those against government agencies, succeeded. Opposing Shinji Ikari had been political suicide for a number of months. Even the multi-national corporation that had profited hugely from his mother's deserted patents had eventually been brought to heel.

"I can't tell you what the tube was like," Shinji told Naoko. And that was the truth. "But what I said to NTV was a lie."

"Dad said it was Suigawa's thugs that made you say it like it was nothing," Naoko's voice was still aurally abrasive, but Shinji found himself becoming used to it.

"The BBC version was more honest," Shinji continued, evading the implied question of whether the Prime Minister had been involved in the manufacture of his lie.

Naoko's Western noodles arrived in a huge bowl, topped with several small meatballs. The sauce was thick, red, and smelled pleasant.

They both ate in silence. At the table by the door, Nokora and her friends were finally ordering.

They chewed, they drank some of Shinji's tea, and Shinji wished - quite unfairly, and hating himself as he completed the thought - that Asuka were sitting in Naoko's place. There was a momentary comfort and ease here, the sort of thing he had been so close to having with the Second Child.

This situation was fundamentally different from an imagined date with the Second Child, of course. Naoko was not being polite and sneaking little looks at him because she actually liked him. They had not talked for more than seven mintues - the issue of like or dislike could not begin to be addressed in that space of time. No, she was starstruck, wearing the slightly preoccupied but happy expression of someone constantly wondering 'is this really happening?'

Shinji, naturally, was asking himself the same question.

Coincidence did not begin to explain this. It was downright serendipitous - having someone he had fantisized about killing less than an hour ago be the bearer of news that once again placed Rei's attitude in a blessedly uncertain light. His call had caused her to faint. She had said his name while unconscious. Hardly the simple dismissal Shinji had assumed at the time.

Naoko placed one of her meatballs on the empty plate Shinji's udon had come on. She nudged the hunk of meat forward with a chopstick. Again, Shinji wished she were Asuka. He ate the meatball, knowing it was being offered up as payment for his company - or perhaps it just humored her, to feed a rare beast.

When the rice was gone, Shinji ate the remaining pink, translucent sheets of pickled ginger, then brought the last dish he had selected from the conveyer belt, the bowl of miso, to his lips. He drained it in three long draughts, drinking up the onions, cubes tofu, and soggy fried squid that had flavored the soup. Naoko was not halfway finished with her noodles.

As Shinji lowered the bowl, Naoko made a rising arc with the index finger of her left hand, rolling her wrist and extending her pinky as the index finger locked vertical to the table. Then she appeared flustered at having lapsed into sign language again. "I mean, wow," she clarified, smiling.

"I was in the ruins," Shinji said. "It tires you out."

"Why were... um, sorry," she had started to ask him what he had been doing out in Old Sapporo. As she apologized for asking such a forward question, her hands traveled through a short sequence of movements.

"Just wandering," Shinji responded indirectly to her half-asked question. "Its peaceful out there. Quiet."

"Um," Naoko prompted. Shinji gestured for her to go on. "Why? Were you, um. Wandering."

It occurred to Shinji that listing one of the positive traits of an activity as 'quiet' was not the best way to communicate something to a deaf person. So he elaborated. He clarified. He told her almost everything.

I hate this place. I hate being alive. I should have died, should have just dissolved, but a devil saved me. And now the world keeps pressing in. Keeps intruding. Keeps asking. Keeps telling. And I can't stand it, because it isn't _my world_. My world is ten years gone. The people I cared about are long gone, even though they still exist. So much of myself was in those people, emerging into a world where I had been forgotten by them was like being torn apart.

And now I can't move. I can't escape this feeling of perpetual agony. I'm tired of being so _out of place_ all the time. Its exhausting. And. And that's all.

"Ms. Ayanami told us about you," Naoko put in when he was done, signing as she spoke. "We had a project. A journal. She wanted us to keep a diary for a month. Like, book-and-paper. And when one of the kids asked why, and why they couldn't just, you know, blog it out, she... she told us that remembering is important. And that written words are best. She. Um."

Shinji stared. The girl seemed to wilt. Wouldn't look at him as she spoke now.

"She told us about the virus. The one they put into the NERV systems after the Angel War. The one that wiped out everything. And she mentioned you. She didn't. She didn't say your name, just that she had lost someone in the war, and when the UN set off that virus, it wiped everything to do with that person. It took everything of you that she had. And she tried to write it down after, but it was more like listing facts than really describing a person. And soon she couldn't even remember what you looked like, only that you had this off-brown color to your hair and. And that your eyes were like a deepness in the sky.

"And now you're here, somehow," her eyes darted to his. "And now I know what that deepness in the sky is all about."

Shinji smiled. It was a labored thing. They had known one another nearly two years before Ayanami had given him permission to call her Rei. At the time he had been preoccupied with Asuka, who was sending him some strong signals, and had somewhat trivialized the occasion. But looking back... he didn't know what it meant. What that moment had meant to Rei. She had eventually forgotten him too, but not because she wanted or needed to. She had hung on to some kind of understanding, even when all she could remember of him was the color of his hair and eyes.

He needed to talk to her. Right now.

"You're leaving?" Naoko asked as he stood and plucked the mon off the counter. "You have to leave now?"

"I need to get back to my car," Shinji explained. "I don't have a phone on me."

"I can help," the girl said, standing with him. "I mean. I know where teacher lives."

"I'm just going to my car right now," Shinji repeated. Maybe she hadn't caught all of what he had said. He tried to face her as he spoke. "I'm going to call Ayanami on the car system. I don't know what I will do after that."

"Um," Naoko looked around. Her sister was watching them with disinterest. "I was wondering if I could come with you. Go with you. Or whatever."

Shinji shook his head as he counted out a 1,000 yen tip. He could barely concentrate on what she was saying, anyway. The car. The phone call. "I don't know where I'm going," he repeated again. "I... I may head back to Shikinomi. And if the call doesn't go well... you wouldn't want to be around me, anyway. I mean, you're going somewhere, right? You were in Shikinomi this afternoon, and you're on your way somewhere else now, right?"

"I. I don't want to go with Noko," the girl did a good job of whispering, though her manner and bearing was becoming somewhat frantic. "I. They send me down with her to meet with grandmother in Tokyo 2, only she gets to bring two friends and all three of them hate me and. And you're Shinji Ikari."

That stopped him dead. "What does that matter?" he said, making for the door. His hands were shaking, but he managed to keep the tremor out of his voice. "It means I'm a rich asshole that can do whatever I want. And you want something, so I should give it to you?"

"No!" they were outside now. People, not just Naoko's sister and her friends but the waitress, the chef, the couple in the corner, they were looking out into the parking lot. Naoko had her arms wrapped around herself and was blushing hard as she choked out the following: "I know what you did for us. I know about the things you fought. Teacher would tell us. Not much, just enough to... to _awe_ us. Abstract monsters, weaponized ideas, things I can't even begin to imagine. You fought and you died and our land only exists because of what you did."

The Honda was in the parking lot, gleaming and perfect. He had had it for three months, and at some point it had become a part of him. When it was destroyed, it grew back. Just like everything else. Shinji sat in the driver's seat now, legs dangling out of the car, not quite touching the ground.

"Rei Ayanami told you that," Shinji said slowly, hoping Naoko would pick up on the incredulity in his voice.

"The news people. Father. I heard from. Everyone," the girl had her hands cupping around her mouth, was breathing heavily.

"I was not fighting for you," he said, tapping on the keys set into the seat divider. Tricky, making his mouth visible to her and doing that at the same time. "I was not fighting for Japan. I was just fighting for me, and my own stupid, moronic need to survive."

The car chimed. Shinji told it to call Rei Ayanami. The car began to search for a person by that name and, since Shinji still had a point to make, he let it, rather than typing in the number he had memorized.

"How old are you anyway, thirteen?" Shinji continued. "I can't take you anywhere. I've pretty much lived at a law firm the last six months. That would be kidnapping, even if you agreed to it."

The bit about the law firm was not hyperbole. Nor was the bit about the law, as he understood it. Shinji had been living either in his car or above the drop-ceiling at Kamesena's firm. He had read the old man's entire library of legal precedent late at night, when he was bored or asleep. The information was all there in his head, waiting to be called upon.

"I'm 16!" Naoko protested. "I'm old enough to drive a moped!"

"Shinji." The voice cut into him. Fixed him in place. Rei's image was splashed across the windshield of the car. He turned away from Naoko.

"Rei." It was all he could say, and the word was weakness. Just one word, but there was such _need_ to it. He was instantly ashamed.

"Why have you not been answering your phone?"

"I..." just tell her. Let her know. It was okay. She probably knew anyway. "I kind of lost it, back there."

The young woman on the screen frowned. "There is nothing of yours here, Shinji Ikari. I looked."

It took him a moment to understand. "No," he backpedaled. "I mean I was... emotionally upset."

"I apologize," Rei said. "So was I. Hello, Miss Kutsura." The last bit was directed at Naoko.

"Um, hello teacher." Naoko was standing just inside the feed's view range, but not actually touching the car. "I'm sorry. I did not mean to intrude."

"I met her in this place, Sapporo," Shinji put in, then covered his mouth. "Did you happen to. Ah. Send her, somehow?"

Rei approached the feed view until her mouth was out of shot. "No. Are you quite certain you ran into her entirely by chance?"

It was a mutual challenge. Shinji put his hands down. He was smiling.

"Interesting," Rei said, then backed into the shot. "I must speak with you at length," Shinji almost giggled at that, "but I believe there is another issue to be addressed. Perhaps one that cannot be deferred for six months."

Shinji opened his mouth. Closed it. The warm feeling in his stomach had suddenly been tied into knots.

Rei made him get out of the Honda. Had Naoko sit in the driver's seat. Instructed the deaf girl to close the door, so they could speak privately. Shinji waited ten seconds, started to get sleepy from the ennui, and headed back into the noodle shop.

"Who the fuck!" Naoko's sister greeted him as he walked in the shop.

"Me," Shinji replied, absently, as he headed back to his table. It had been cleared off. "I -the fuck."

The girl whirled and marched out of the shop. Her friends watched her go. Shinji yawned and selected a few more items off the conveyor belt, then moved by the window so he could watch Noko Kutsura yell at her sister through a locked car door.

One of the sushi he had taken off the conveyor belt had cream cheese in it. Cream cheese. Ten years and the recipes had gone to pot.

Rei's face in the windshield was joined by another. The screen had split, like. Conference call, Shinji guessed. The new person, a man, was bearded and also, clearly, _not amused. _He hoped Rei knew what she was doing...

Noko saw the man in the windshield and fled back to the shop. Before she was even inside, her cell phone rang.

"Fuck you!" she shouted at Shinji, then flipped her phone open. "Um. Hey daddy..."

Naoko was gesturing to Shinji now. He left a mon on the table and walked outside. Naoko got out of the car. She had been crying.

"They want to talk with you," she said, all pretense at correct tone gone. Then she sat against the car and said nothing further, and quite deliberately did not look at Shinji or at the view screen.

"Okay," Shinji said as he slid into place. The driver's seat suddenly felt like an entry plug. There was Rei, hovering in the display, and there was something huge and scary that looked like it wanted to kill him. Naoko and Noko's father, as it turned out.

The conversation was rather long, and mostly involved Shinji repeating himself while Rei made various assurances and promises. He could tell what they were both working toward, but the father was the one that had to suggest it. It did not help that the man, whose name was Yuimoto_, _seemed to be spending a good portion of his concentration trying to convince himself that the boy named Shinji Ikari who now sat before him was, in fact, _not_ the famous Shinji Ikari. The bearded man was too polite to ask, and Shinji let him wonder. He was never going to act on his fame. Ever.

Apparently the Kutsura family had moved to Shikimori a year ago specifically so Naoko could attend the Keitei Institute. Her sister, who had two ears that functioned perfectly fine, had not taken the move well. Apparently there had been a boy in Tokyo 2 she had been quite fond of. This had led to an escalating conflict between sisters, in which Naoko was always the passive member. The victim. Yuimoto Kutsura shouldered the blame for the current situation entirely.

The current situation, it turned out, was a cruel mix of emotional neglect and casual physical violence, carried out over the course of two hours as the sisters and Noko's friends had driven, as Shinji had, around the fucking Shikki mountains. They had been sent together because Naoko had indicated that things between her and her sister were improving, which was likely either a lie she had been forced to tell, or the result of manipulation by Noko.

Shinji Ikari had fought angels. This was worse. This was harder. Here he was in the driver's seat - the _pilot's seat_ - dealing with problems he couldn't even begin to understand. But the challenge was welcome. It felt like home.

Yuimoto at last got down to it. "Mister Ikari," the man began, his expression a mixture of anger and regret, "if it is not out of your way, and I will be willing to pay for any additional expense, could you please see little Nao to her grandmother in Tokyo 2?"

"I can take her back to Shikimori, if that would be better..." Shinji began, glancing to Rei. The blue-haired woman shook her head. Okay...

Yuimoto appeared pained. "If that is inconvenient, could you please drop her off at the train station on the mainland?"

"No. I mean, I can take her to Tokyo 2, yes. If that is what you want me to do."

"Thank you very much," the man bowed out of view. "Her grandmother is ill, and it is Naoko's preference to continue with the visit, as planned. My _other daughter_ will be returning home now."

Idly, Shinji wondered why Naoko was really going to Tokyo 2. The sickness of a relation seemed flimsy to him, but then again he did not remember mother at all, had spent most of his life hating his father, and was unaware of any extended relations still living. Family was definitely something he could not understand.

Yuimoto exchanged some further apologetic pleasantries, copied down the GPS tag on Shinji's car, and asked to speak with Naoko. Shinji tapped the girl on the shoulder and let her sit in the driver seat again while he leaned against the car and casually dodged the rocks Noko and her friends were throwing at him.

After perhaps a minute of that Naoko knocked on the window and slid into the passenger seat. Apparently this was really going to happen. Shinji got in the car just as a piece of cement as big as his fist bounced off the driver's side window. Yeah, Noko was _pissed._

Yuimoto Kutsura apologized for the inconvenience again, told his daughter he loved her, and signed off. Rei gave Naoko some further assurances, then leaned forward until her mouth was out of shot and said: "I will see you tonight, Shinji."

And he could feel her reaching out, over the distance. He felt her being brush up against his, and then recede, leaving a sort of _impression_ on him.

_Tonight. Anywhere you are, I will find you. Because there are things we both need to know. Promises to make. Bonds to form. _

_I've been waiting for six months, wondering if you were even real, if perhaps you were a clone made by someone as a means of acquiring wealth. I told myself that, even though I felt you when you emerged back into the world. Because I was afraid that you were ignoring me. That I was not important enough to contact._

_Tonight, Ikari._

_Tonight.

* * *

_

To Be Concluded. Please. Christ.

* * *

Author's Notes: Some fun facts. This was written over the course of a year on my iPhone and, as some of you have no doubt noticed, while this is a sequence of linear events, there isn't anything in here that could really be called a plot. This is entirely in keeping with the three chapters that came before this one.

The final chapter may be short, may be long. It might have a lot of hot albino sex, or may just be Rei telling him to buck up.


End file.
